Hi, again.  I'm not a lawyer, but I did speak briefly about the
Canadian professor's question with a lawyer experienced in patent and
copyright issues.  For what it's worth, he felt that her reproducing
one thread from my list's voluminous logfiles for use in her class
fell within normal fair use practices, and he did not feel that she
needed to get the permission of the people whose messages she's
including.
 
     As for the professor's decision to mask the identity of the
people who wrote the messages she'll be reproducing, I should have
made it more clear what I meant. She plans to assign a pseudonym to
each message writer, thus obviating Peter Rauch's well-taken point
about following the evolution of a writer's thinking.  I might point
out that it is a common practice in social science research to make
use of personal journals, interviews, etc. but to use pseudonyms to
protect privacy.  I might note, too, that at least two books from
mainstream publishers have quoted extensively from my list's logfiles.
One book identified each writer by name (without getting the writers'
permission), while the other book assigned pseudonyms.  There was some
vehement objection on the list to the former practice when it became
known, but not to the latter.
 
     As for Dan Lester's remarks--well, I'm afraid we simply disagree.
It is standard practice in most colleges and universities with which
I'm familiar to make copies of articles available on reserve for
students in a class.  If the class is large, the library often makes
multiple copies available.  Though I know that this can be a hairy
issue, I also know that most institutions regard such reserve reading
practices not as "scams" (Dan's term) but as "fair use."  Now that
colleges and universities are moving increasingly toward electronic
reserves, this issue becomes even hairier.  At least some schools with
which I'm familiar will be putting copyrighted electronic reserves in
a password-protected area on the WWW, so that only students in the
class will be able to access them.
 
     I'm in general a strong believer in copyright.  I get bent out of
shape if anyone sends to e-mail lists or posts on publicly accessible
web sites articles from newspapers and magazines, and I'm vigilant
about such matters on my own list.  But I also support the notion of
"fair use" of copyrighted materials in the classroom.  Having read
with great interest the responses on this list and elsewhere, I feel
convinced that the Canadian professor's use of a thread from my list's
logfiles is covered by that concept.  And I also see that there's no
consensus.  We live in interesting times.
 
     Again, many thanks to all who offered their thoughts.
 
     Joan Korenman
 
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*    Joan Korenman                [log in to unmask]                         *
*    U. of Md. Baltimore County                                             *
*    Baltimore, MD 21228-5398     http://www-unix.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/  *
*                                                                           *
*    The only person to have everything done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe  *
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